Boost the Mood@Work

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a team during a long crisis. Nobody is in open conflict, nobody is refusing to work, and yet something has gone still. People wait. They do what is asked and not much more, and the small spontaneous energy that used to move things along has gone somewhere else. Managers often read this as a motivation problem and reach for motivational answers, which is precisely when it gets worse. It is not a lack of will. It is fear, fatigue, sadness or anger doing what those things do, and none of it is abnormal.

You cannot order anyone to feel better. What you can do is create the conditions in which people choose to move again, if they want to. That is all this exercise is: four steps, about an hour, no material beyond a room and some willingness. Step one sets the mindset - kindness, no mockery, no irony, real confidentiality afterwards. Step two, in small circles of four to eight, gives each person two minutes to name the problems weighing on them, at work or at home, while the others simply listen. No comments, no questions, no fixing. Step three is gratitude, same two minutes, same listening - though here people are allowed to smile.

The order matters, and it is the opposite of what most icebreakers do. Gratitude first, before anything difficult has been said, is decoration and everyone knows it. Gratitude after the group has heard what each person is actually carrying is something else entirely. Only then does step four make sense: the subgroups come back together, the two most important problems are chosen collectively, ten minutes of unfiltered brainstorming per problem, and the group keeps the three to five solutions it could genuinely start on Monday.

One warning. This works because of respect, acceptance and kindness, and it is useless without them - a team that is not ready for confidentiality is not ready for step two. And do not let the solutions evaporate: turn them into an action plan and tell people what happened to them. Download the exercise below and run it as it is written. It also works well as a preparation for the Crisis Canvas for Teams, when you want to go further.